A Pirate Lives Free
by Mr Khan
Summary: Captured by the world government at a young age, all Nico Robin really wants is to be free... (One Shot)


A Pirate Lives Free

By Mr Khan

A monstrously large palm made contact with the back of her head, shoving her roughly forward towards the intimidating steel door. She walked ahead a few paces before that same huge hand clasped her shoulder and jerked her back roughly. The two figures stood still for a moment, and she had another chance to examine her companion. It was huge, ape-ish, though its species could not properly be determined as it was entirely cloaked from head to foot, a mask of death on the cowl over its face, blank, unseeing, yet somehow able to function. To the little girl, it was terror incarnate, scarier than anything she had seen over the last terrible few weeks.

The steel door swung open. A wave of smoke blew out, and the ape thrust her roughly inside.

In another world, it would not have been like this. In another world, she would have lived the carefree life of the child that she was. In that other world, she would worry about homework, the stupid teasing of the neighbor boy, or going home to her mother with a scraped knee. In that other world, she did not need to become one of the most wanted criminals on the planet at the tender age of eight, to see her home destroyed in fire, to be given a chance to escape, and then to squander it.

The inside room was filled with the screams of men and women, the condemned being baptized in boiling water, supposedly as a means of disinfecting them. The room was dim, lit only by the fires that kept the water boiling, filled with steam and smoke. The source of the smoke was made apparent by a rough-looking man taking a drag on a cigar. The red glow from his cigar, the smoke and steam, made him look spectral and demonic. The little girl's eyes widened and her knees shook, then the steel door clanged shut behind her.

The man pulled out a sword and stepped towards her, a sinister gleam in his eye. He was a terror of a man, fully suited for his job, and he loved it dearly, Vice Guard Shiliew of the Rain.

"I heard the rumors and saw the poster, but damn," Shiliew said. "You really are just a kid. Well, whatever you did to end up here, you're gonna really start regretting it in a few minutes." He leered down at her. "Nico Robin, welcome to Hell."

~0~ _Some Time Later_ ~0~

Godland Skypiea. It seemed like Heaven, and so far she could find nothing to indicate otherwise. Yeah, there had been that attack by that strange-looking guerilla in the White Sea below, or that ominous aged woman and her cryptic request for entrance tolls. But now that they had reached the White White Sea, and this beautiful, pristine beach, she could think of no word to describe this other than paradise.

"Ah, this is the captain speaking." She heard her captain calling. He had rushed ashore, full of the zest of adventure, and now dangled off of some species of palm tree. "There's so much fun stuff to do that I don't know where to start! Over!" He was a fun-loving, if impulsive and often-idiotic young man. Whatever his flaws, the pirate known as Straw Hat Luffy just wanted to be the freest man on the ocean, and that appealed to her greatly.

"This is Usopp," came the reply. "How about we take a vacation here? Over!" This came from the long-nosed sniper, who had busied himself at playing in the cloud-sand. He shared the captain's sense of mad-cap fun, and though she suspected Usopp of being more than a little screw-loose, he was, at times, a voice of reason compared to the impulsive Luffy.

"Well, this is certainly a mysterious flower blooming here." The handsome, blonde cook had wandered to the edge of the beach and was looking through a bunch of red flowers that seemed to be growing right up out of the cloud. "These leaves are balloons too," he observed. "Will they pop like that octopus did?" He picked a flower.

"Ahh, this feels great!" the navigator said, stretching her arms. "The marines won't follow us here!" That too was true, and another component of the paradise. The fact that they had gotten here at all had been a miracle, and it was doubtful that the marines would risk the waste of resources to try and follow them. "We can really stretch our wings!" she said. Nami the navigator was stingy with money but generous with friendship, as with all her nakama.

The tiny reindeer-doctor, who had been rolling around on the clouds, now bumped into Nami as she stood. "Hey, Chopper, look," Nami said, pointing to the edge of the shore. "What do you think that is?" The doctor sat up, following Nami's gaze to a small gazebo on the shore's edge. Chopper the doctor was the youngest among them, and almost as cowardly as Usopp, but that simply made him all the more adorable in her eyes.

"Whoa!" Luffy exclaimed, as he pulled a large green fruit free from the palm tree. "A weird-looking fruit! Let's eat!" Impulsive as ever, he tried biting into it, managing only to chip a tooth. He exclaimed his frustration, then threw the steel-hard fruit down at the sniper, causing the two to start fighting as they often did.

"Robin-chwan!" the cook called, dashing across the beach towards her. "A Sky Island flower just for you!" She looked back at him, vaguely perturbed. Sanji the ship's cook was a man who sat right on the border between "chivalrous" and "lady crazy," and she was not sure where this little gesture lay. "One for Robin-chwan," he said, ignoring her nonplussed look and placing the flower behind her ear. "And one more for…" he dashed off towards the gazebo. "Nami-swan! Your flower!"

"But how do you even get wet in a sea of clouds?" the swordsman grumbled as he walked past her. "Oh, there we go," he said, picking up something white and fluffy that resembled a rag to wipe off his wet feet, but turned out to be the tail of a fox. Zoro might very well have been the deadliest person she had ever known, but his reactions to the world around him never ceased to amuse her.

Robin may not have thought of herself that way, but her life was almost like a storybook itself: an orphan, on the run from the World Government, she had grown into womanhood as a beautiful, smart adventurer-archaeologist, still on the run, but now with wonderful friends. She took the flower out of her hair and pondered just how amazing her life was.

Suddenly she heard a sound, a series of notes played upon a lovely harp. "Hmm? What's that sound?" Luffy asked as he tried to chew through another fruit.

"Oi, someone's over there!" Zoro grunted, pointing towards a small cloud-hill, where a graceful figure could be seen.

"That guerilla again?" Usopp asked.

"The whistle! Blow the whistle and have him come save us!" Chopper panicked.

"No, wait…" Sanji cautioned. "That's… an angel."

Paradise indeed

~0~

"How is she doing?"

"Poorly," the doctor replied. The prison doctor was known as a man of few words, one of the Longarm tribe whose dexterity and demeanor made him well-suited to be just what terminal prisons needed in a doctor: quick, skillful, but mostly unconcerned with the wellbeing of his patients. He did not care especially about this one, either.

Vice-Warden Magellan did care, however. Ever since Nico Robin had arrived at Impel Down, now almost a year ago, he had made it a point to keep track of her wellbeing, to see to it that she did not suffer unduly, however difficult that might be in a place like this.

Now, Magellan could easily be described as a hard man, one who had used his devil fruit power to melt the flesh off the bones of pirates or choke men and women alike to death with noxious fumes, he always ignored pleas for mercy. His victims had all been prisoners, however, savage and cruel pirates who had earned bounties through their criminal atrocities. The people he routinely killed, well, they deserved it, and they deserved the horrors of Impel Down that they often tried to escape before meeting death at his hands or the hands of his guard staff. But this Nico Robin, now, she was just a girl, no more than 9 years old. Magellan simply could not believe that she had done anything to deserve a $B 79,000,000 bounty. Seeing that little girl in this prison made his stomach turn, and not because of his indigestion.

"Well, at least you've tried to make her more comfortable," the doctor said, though he did not sound genuinely concerned. "If the Warden had had his way, she'd be in the Burning Hell instead of down here."

The current Warden was old and powerful, a Navy veteran and a favorite of the Gorosei. She was a living example of how looks were deceiving, for she had never been physically daunting and her form had shrunken with age, but she remained strongly powerful and resolute. She was an Absolute Justice type, as were many Navy vets that he had known. To the Warden, everyone in the prison deserved to be there, and every single Berry on their bounty was both earned and fitting, and it did not matter how they had earned it. The Warden had simply sent Robin down to Burning Hell as a matter of course.

Magellan had woven his case for moving her carefully. The pirates locked up here were scum, and that was not to be denied, but they were not without humanity altogether. What if, he told the Warden, what if seeing an innocent-looking girl locked up down here like the rest of them inspired that spark of humanity and caused them to riot? The escape of the Golden Lion Shiki was still fresh on everyone's minds, so it was a dangerous time for Impel Down, and her presence amongst the general population would just stir the pot. Better to put her away, safe and hidden, down amongst the invisible prisoners of Level 6. "You're right," Magellan said. "At least down here she can get a separate cell, and the conditions are pretty mild."

"Even two weeks on Level 4 was too much for a girl like her, though," the doctor said. "The heat was too much for her immune system, and this pit's just crawling with diseases. We can't keep 'em all out no matter how much we boil the inmates when they come in."

Robin lay sleeping wrapped in a blanket on her small cell cot, shivering as she squirmed slightly under the covers.

"So her fever hasn't gone down?" Magellan asked.

"No," the doctor replied. "That makes three weeks now. She won't live much longer."

Robin stirred again, opening her eyes. "Is that… really an angel…?" she asked. Her head seemed to be pointed at the doctor, who arched his eyebrows, but Magellan could see that her eyes were unfocused and glassy, staring not at the doctor, but past him, seeing something that was not there.

"She's delirious," Magellan observed.

"Yup. She won't live much longer," the doctor confirmed.

~0~

"Did you hear something?" Nami asked.

"Yeah," Zoro said warily. "Don't move."

The three nakama stood on the branch of the gigantic tree, listening to the jungle noises of Upper Yard. Nami looked fearful and tense, while Zoro was watchful and quiet.

Robin noticed it at the same time as Zoro, the brown-patterned Sky Pike that launched itself out of the _bottom_ of the cloud river that wound its way above them. It descended, its jaws held wide, right towards Nami, who had her back turned, looking for danger from some other quarter.

Nami barely had a split second to panic, but Zoro and Robin stayed cool. Robin crossed her arms quickly, summoning her devil fruit power, arms emerging from the Pike's snout and clasping together to snap its jaw shut, while Zoro leapt forward with a clenched fist and punched the Pike right in the stomach. "Quit bothering us, damnit!" he yelled as the stricken Pike fell to another cloud river on the ground below.

"Sky Island's scary…" Nami murmured, echoing Usopp. Robin smiled. It was certainly a dangerous island for the unwary, but she would not have it any other way. It was all part of her paradise, beautiful scenery, adventure, ancient ruins, a bit of danger, and beloved friends to share it with.

"C'mon," Zoro said. "I wanna get going and meet this God." He continued walking along the branch. Nami followed him, cautiously, not knowing what quarter the next giant predator might assault her from.

Robin took a step forward, but she suddenly felt faint. All strength left her legs and she fell backwards onto the branch.

"Hey, Robin!" Nami said in surprise. "Robin!"

"Oi, Robin, get a grip!" she heard Zoro saying as everything went black.

~0~

_I'm not well, am I?_ Robin opened her eyes slowly. Her throat felt dry and her body felt numb. She couldn't move. She couldn't see much in the darkness of her cell, with only a sliver of light entering through a crack on the bottom of the steel door, one that she could barely discern as she turned her head to the side. She drew a breath, coughed, and felt pain spike throughout her body.

_That's right. I'm in prison. I'm not on Skypiea, and I never have been._ She coughed again, and this time the pain wasn't as bad. The numbness spread. It was ending; it would all be over for her soon. She had known that Saul was wrong. The friendly giant, the one who had allowed her to flee Ohara, he was the one who had promised that she would find her own friends someday, friends who appreciated her for who she was. But this was the real world, where one girl could not fight the whole world, where she was not meant to have friends, not meant to be free.

Her vision blurred, her dim perception of her hell beginning to fade. Her eyes fluttered and gently shut.

**Bang, bang. **

Robin snapped back awake. **Bang.** Sharp blows were falling against her cell door.

"Oi, don't bang on it, Luffy!" Sanji chided.

"But Robin's inside! I thought we were gonna save her!" Luffy protested.

"If you smash the door in, it might hit her," Usopp explained. "We don't know how big these cells are."

"I've got it," Zoro said. **Swipe, swipe.** Steel slit through steel like a knife through butter.

"Alright, that got the bolts," Sanji said. "Now heave."

"Yosh!"

"Outward, you idiot!" Zoro shouted.

The door tore away, and light streamed into the cell. It was not the dim, reddish light of Level 6, but pure, white light that was overwhelming to her eyes.

"Robin, Robin!" Chopper shouted, the first to pass the threshold into her room. "Are you okay?"

Robin could not respond, her voice caught in her throat, her body yet paralyzed.

"She'll be alright," Nami said. The orange-haired woman came to stand over Robin's cot, smiling at her. "Robin's tough." There were tears in her eyes.

"C'mon, Robin!" Luffy said, rushing into the room. "We've gotta get going! Adventure calls!" He and Nami each extended a hand towards her.

Robin reached out with her hand, surprised to find that she could move again. Luffy took one of her hands, and Nami took the other. Together they helped her sit up in her cot.

She was less surprised when she found that her feet reached the floor, that she was again the tall, beautiful adventurer-archaeologist. With Nami and Luffy's help, she stood, leaving her child's body behind.

"Do you feel all right?" Chopper asked cautiously.

"Yes," Robin said, smiling back at him. She looked around to all of her friends, smiling her mysterious smile. "Let's get going."

"Yosh!" Luffy shouted, convinced that Robin was okay. "Onward to adventure!" He charged out of the cell, into the light, and didn't look back. The others turned to follow him, and Nico Robin followed last of all, departing with her nakama at last.

She was free.

**Author's Note:** Inspiration comes from Hans Christian Andersen's _The Little Match Girl_. It's just about as depressing. Sorry! The "old Warden" is a reference to the Obaasan prison warden from "Toriko," and I do attempt to humanize Magellan a touch.


End file.
